The West Coast Mainline debacle has given opponents of HS2 another stick with which to beat the government. Cheryl Gillan took the opportunity of Patrick McLoughlin’s statement on the matter to ask how anyone could trust the Department of Transport’s twenty year projections for HS2 when it got the ten year ones for the West Coast so wrong.
Gillan, the former Welsh Secretary who has a Chilterns constituency, is now freed of the constraints of collective responsibility and is stepping up her campaign against HS2. She’s tabled 22 parliamentary questions on the matter and it’s quite clear that the tenacious Gillan isn’t going to let this go.
The Prime Minister, though, needs no reminder of the strength of feeling that HS2 generates. Whenever he is driven to Chequers, he passes a whole host of anti HS2 posters pinned up on the approach roads to his country retreat.
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